"We were unconvinced about Trump's plan until he threatened us with a heaven-like utopia," says a GOP rep from The South. "We realized that if we did not vote to pass Trump's healthcare plan, a world where everyone was happy and at peace would occur. We had to fall in line. Preventing health, happiness, and causing as much death as possible is more important than all other concerns."

GOP rep from The South went on to add: "Personally, I wouldn't be opposed to a utopia if it only included white heterosexual males and their robot slave girlfriends."

This isn't really so different from what happened with the budget in '11.

I mean, yeah, the result's completely different, obviously. But "Speaker has no control over Freedom Caucus, and establishment Republicans don't actually want to blow everything up" is the same root cause.

This result is, obviously, a huge relief. And I hope it's a sign of things to come, in terms of Republicans being unable to enact their most destructive goals. But it's also a sign that yeah there's a pretty strong likelihood we're heading for another government shutdown, and who knows how many other failures of basic governance?

Meanwhile, I still think Gorsuch's appointment is a foregone conclusion. There are places where the psychopathic fringe and the establishment are on the same page, important ones, and far too many of them.

Obviously I'm happy about the AHCA going down. Both for positive reasons (relief that people get to keep their healthcare) and schadenfreude (political damage to Ryan and Trump). But it doesn't really lighten the existential dread any.

David Brooks wrote:The core Republican problem is this: The Republicans can’t run policy-making from the White House because they have a marketing guy in charge of the factory. But they can’t run policy from Capitol Hill because it’s visionless and internally divided. So the Republicans have the politics driving the substance, not the other way around. The new elite is worse than the old elite — and certainly more vapid.

When the balky hardliners of the House Freedom Caucus visited the White House earlier this week, this was Steve Bannon's opening line, according to people in the conference room in the Eisenhower Executive Office Building:

"Guys, look. This is not a discussion. This is not a debate. You have no choice but to vote for this bill."

Bannon's point was: This is the Republican platform. You're the conservative wing of the Republican Party. But people in the room were put off by the dictatorial mindset. One of the members replied: "You know, the last time someone ordered me to something, I was 18 years old. And it was my daddy. And I didn't listen to him, either."

I believe that the correct response to being given an order by Steve Bannon is "Fuck you, you nazi fuck." But "lol you're not my dad" is acceptable.

According to The Daily Beast (quoting anonymous sources), Bannon's response is to advise Trump to keep an enemies list, because this is a White House that thinks Nixon's only mistake was resigning.

I'm not going to fall into the trap of thinking the enemy of my enemy is my friend, and I'm not going to forget that the reason these guys refused to go along with the AHCA is that they thought it didn't take away enough people's healthcare. But it's nice to know Bannon's not in control, and I'll take his humiliation as an added bonus.